'Atrangi Re' director Aanand L Rai addresses age-gap criticism between leads Akshay & Sara

After watching the trailer of the upcoming film Atrangi Re, fans are looking forward to watching Akshay Kumar, Sara Ali Khan, and Dhanush sharing the screen for the first time. The trailer of the upcoming film has been receiving a lot of love and appreciation from the fans. Since the time the film’s cast was announced, it has been criticised from all quarters due to the age difference between Sara (26), and the two male actors Akshay (54) and Dhanush (38). In a recent interaction with Mid-Day, director Aanand L Rai spoke about the unusual casting.

The filmmaker addressed the casting controversy of Atrangi Re and emphasised that the audience just needs to be patient. Sharing his views on the same, the Ranjhanaa director said that Atrangi means funnily weird. He further said that if a filmmaker shows patience in making a film, it’s his small expectation that people wait and understand the reason behind such a cast. Rai claimed that people have the habit of judging people. He asks people to be patient and watch the film for two hours, and react to it thereafter. 

Aanand L Rai addresses age gap criticism related to Akshay & Sara in Atrangi Re 

Rai added that he was not worried as a filmmaker. He revealed that he is not in the entertainment industry to make formulaic films. If he goes wrong, he can be critiqued. With every success he has achieved in life, Rai explained that he has learned what is right and with every failure, he has learned what went wrong. 

Apart from this, the director also opened up about his choice to go for a digital run rather than the theatrical release of Atrangi Re. Despite several postponements owing to the pandemic, the multi-starrer big-budget film will release on the OTT platform. Elucidating upon the same, Aanand said that when he started making the film, the medium was different. As a storyteller, he wanted to make an honest movie. His idea then was to reach maximum people. He at last while concluding his thoughts shared that he always wanted to release the film for bigger screen space, but since the deal was done and they cannot backtrack on it so he was also left heartbroken about the fact that the film will be released on OTT. The film will premiere on Disney + Hotstar on December 24. 

IMAGE: Instagram/AkshayKumar/AanandLRai